


Fear (You're Just A Name That I Have Learned)

by NighttimeEspeon



Series: Hope (You're Just A Name That I Hold Close) [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Everyone Is Alive, Fix-It, Found Family Matters, M/M, Minor Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester, Past Character Death, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Requited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:01:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28002069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NighttimeEspeon/pseuds/NighttimeEspeon
Summary: My own little fix-it fic because Dean Winchester deserves better than what they gave him. All of Team Free Will 2.0 and their extended found family do.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: Hope (You're Just A Name That I Hold Close) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2050950
Comments: 9
Kudos: 114





	Fear (You're Just A Name That I Have Learned)

**Author's Note:**

> Can you believe that I actually managed to finish a fanfic? This took actual weeks of my time but I'm happy with it now! I didn’t actually watch the finale. I just absorbed it from being on fandom Twitter & Tumblr so any inaccuracies about those events are down to that.

Something’s wrong. He died, he remembers dying. But now the world still feels like it has that exact same off-kilter feel to it that it’s had ever since Jack had reappeared everyone. He briefly wonders if Jack accidentally did something while fixing everything. He doesn’t think so but he’s not sure why everything has an _off_ feel to it. The thought leaves his head before he’s even done having it giving him no time to question it too deeply. 

Bobby’s here, Bobby is explaining the rules of heaven. A new and improved heaven. The beer is crappy, John Winchester lives close by and he’s not ready to examine the uneasy feeling that hearing that piece of news invokes inside of him, Cas is apparently safe but he’s not here… He’s spent all this time with Jack fixing heaven but he didn’t want to see them? He knew Cas couldn’t really return to heaven in recent years, not with all the mistakes he made with the angels and then their dying numbers, he’d made his home on Earth with them. But Cas just up and returning without ever looking back the second he was given an opportunity to return to heaven just doesn’t sit well with him. Cas has made unpredictable choices before but Dean thought he knew the angel better than that. What about his speech about caring for them all, about _loving_ Dean? Dean is fully aware that a long time ago Cas’s goal was to reform heaven from the inside, he even went to war with the angels and killed countless numbers of them over it. And yeah, he never managed to cause any lasting change there. The other angels just aren’t wired the same way as Cas. 

Maybe that’s exactly why a new and improved heaven needs Cas to function… A little bit of humanity and heart to keep the dickbags in check. Yet Dean doesn’t understand why he couldn’t come and let them know he was no longer suffering in the empty before disappearing off to fix things upstairs. That’s just irresponsible, declaration of love or no. And what if Dean hadn’t died? What if he had finished the hunt and gone back home and carried on his research into finding Cas? Doing an entire jailbreak into the empty to find Cas long gone? 

Not that he’s entitled to Cas’s time or life but he thought they were past this not communicating their intentions thing. And then Cas just goes off to work on his big heaven project without so much as a heads up? Dean’s not sure, because it’s never really happened to him like that before, but it has to be in bad form to tell someone you’re in love with them and then disappear forever if you have other options. Before you even hear what they have to say back. He can’t even think about that. Not yet. He could have come back and let him know he was safe and he _didn’t_. 

Something inside him claws hard at the emotions and the anxiety building up inside him and dampens them down as though they were never even there at all. His train of thought slips away and makes it hard to even worry about what just happened. He’s already been feeling numb inside since beating Chuck. He knows deep down that he’s the man Cas believes him to be, but he also knows he’s tired and he was full of grief at one point and now it’s hard to remember what he was even grieving over unless he tries so much that his head starts to pound. Then something inside him pulls on the feelings and the uneasiness until he’s just numb again. It’s hard to take advantage of your freedom when you don’t feel free. The entire new existence just feels wrong. His thoughts feel like goop if he thinks too hard or too long about the entirety of the wrongness of the situation. Maybe heaven or whatever dampening his emotions is a blessing. Maybe the world just feels wrong for now, and it will start to feel right again soon. 

Heaven’s too bright. His head hurts. He wants to question if headaches should exist in heaven but he can’t wrap his head around the question.

At least he has Baby. He takes off and drives. 

The world still feels off to him. He can feel the tendrils of something clawing at the edges. It feels like it’s crawling under his skin and creeping through the too-bright world outside of it. If he thinks too hard for too long his head starts to spin and the dizziness sets in.

The prayer happens anyway, without him even meaning to. A silent thought.

_So I died._

__

__

_I hope you’re okay._

Nothing. 

He keeps driving. He’s numb again. The road is endless and the scenery spectacular. Sam will be along at some point.

_I heard you reformed the place. You and Jack. Good work._

Birds sing in the distance. He turns on the music. He can’t remember what he was thinking about.

He’s sure hours go by, just him and the open road. The car feels weirdly empty without any of his family members who he’s grown accustomed to sharing long drives with.

Something feels wrong. It’s hard to question it because the thoughts won’t stay in his head long enough to.

_Cas? Can you hear me? Can you show your face at some point?_

Nothing. 

He keeps driving.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been driving. Time passes differently than Earth time here, right?

Whenever he looks at the clock on Baby his head starts to pound even harder until he looks away. He never remembers what the clock said. The world doesn’t stop feeling off-kilter. It’s hard to think about it.

The visions start at some point. He’s seeing Sam’s life on Earth. He doesn’t look happy or fulfilled. Dean can’t make out who the woman he’s with is. He doesn’t think it’s Eileen. Too bad, they were good together. They name their son Dean. It’s hard for him to form an opinion on that. It’s touching in a way, but Sam looks like he’s struggling. He’s not truly happy. Even with his apple pie family. Dean thinks back to Garth, to Bess and Gertie, to baby Sam and Cas. The apocalypse world refugees. Jody, Donna, the girls. They have friends and family on Earth and his brother doesn’t seem to be reaching out to any of them. Baby Dean should be friends with Sam and Cas and Gertie. Sam doesn’t do it though. Sam should reach out to Charlie and Stevie and hang out or something. Sam doesn’t though. Sam’s getting older, no time at all is passing in heaven. At least he thinks it’s not. He doesn’t know. He wishes the visions would show him more of earth beyond Sam’s depressing non-life. He wants more for Sam. His supposed nephew deserves a better existence too.

He stops at a bridge. He knows this bridge, he’s been here before, in life. Not long until Sam comes along. He doesn’t think he’s been driving that long… Not for years. But time is different here. And the world goes out of focus if he looks at any one thing for too long. 

His brother arrives. It was good to see Bobby, he loves Bobby, but he also had a full eight years between losing Bobby, getting over Bobby and reuniting with Bobby. Sam is his little brother and also someone from his 2020 family, someone who it feels like left his life barely yesterday or maybe it’s been years? It feels like both all at once. He knows a significant amount of time passed on Earth. Sam lived to be an old man. It’s been an infinite amount of time and barely a few hours all at once since he started driving aimlessly and he’s missed his people. He missed their little Earth family, Team Free Will 2.0, plus their countless friends and connections. He missed Cas. He missed the kid. The kid who had said they could find him in raindrops and specks of dirt and sand or whatever. He’d rather just have the kid. He was never able to find the rest of his fallen family here in heaven. Did he ever look? Was Charlie here? Their Charlie who he misses every time he looks at her Apocalypse World counterpart? He didn’t see her. The world around him spins. He saw Bobby and The Roadhouse… 

So is the bunker here somewhere? If Cas and Jack restructured heaven they must have put the bunker here somewhere, right? Maybe the goal should have been to start off at the bunker and figure it out from there. At least he’d get to feel at home again for a while. Sammy probably won’t want to go looking for the bunker with him though, he probably wants to wait for his wife… Or go see Mom and Dad and Bobby. Why has he been on the road for so long and not seen a single other person? No, he’s only been on the road a few hours probably. He felt so lonely, all those years, uh, hours… (Maybe it was a few days)? That he’d spent driving around alone. Now his little brother is here though. His head hurts from thinking too much. He can’t remember what he was thinking about. 

Getting in the car is probably the first step and so he starts to head towards her.

“Dean, we have to go!”

It’s hard to comprehend and Sam seems frantic.

“We are going… Baby’s right here.”

The world is so blurry around the edges.

He’s not sure when the vertigo set in but he can’t stop noticing it now that he’s made himself aware of it.

Sam sounds even more frantic.

“We have to go or you’re going to die, come on!”

“I already died. You already died. This is heaven.”

“No, Dean. It’s not. Come on. Think! You’ve been in this situation before!”

He can’t remember a situation like this ever, a lot of time has passed between him experiencing any situation at all and him just driving on the open road. No, no time has passed, he only died like yesterday. Or maybe it was a couple of weeks ago. The thing pulling at the edges of the world and making everything feel off-kilter won’t detach from his brain so he can think. It grips tightly to his thoughts before he can even comprehend them.

His brother slaps him.

“Wake up!” He yells in his face.

Dean’s lost and confused. Maybe he should get back in Baby and meet back up with Sam later when the world feels less fuzzy and black?

“I don’t have much time left. Come on! Fight it. Poughkeepsie! Poughkeepsie!” He yells.

It’s been a long time since Dean heard that word. A long time has passed since Earth. It’s been a long time since he got to see Earth, he's sure of it. But the memories of the rebar impaling him are from some time not so long ago. And that was when he last saw Earth before he came to heaven. He doesn’t know, it’s hard to remember anything.

Poughkeepsie’s a code.

Drop everything and run?

Run to where?

Can’t leave heaven. 

Heaven’s a prison. 

No... It’s been rebuilt, it’s no longer a prison of memories. Except that’s not true because now it’s a prison of solitude. He’s supposed to feel free. 

His brother’s no longer here. Did he leave? He was here not so long ago. He thinks so anyway.

_Poughkeepsie._

Something’s not right.

 _“Wake up!”_ Sam had yelled. A lifetime ago. Or 5 minutes ago? His thoughts are like water through his fingertips. He can’t hold onto anything solid. 

He’s going to pass out.

 _Can’t die in heaven._ He thinks as he hits the ground.

  


⍣ ❦ ⍣ ❦ ⍣ ❦ ⍣ ❦ ⍣ ❦ ⍣

  


“It’s not working, Cas.”

He hears Sammy, maybe he didn’t disappear. Maybe they can hit the road now. Sam probably wants the tour. They should look for Bobby, back the way he came somewhere. When Sam finds a place to settle he’ll go looking for the bunker.

“It has to work. We did everything you did last time.”

_Cas?_

“What if it doesn’t? You weren’t there. He seemed pretty far gone.”

 _Sam?_ He tries to ask out loud, but it’s hard to come to, hard to get his mouth to form the words. His head feels like a sack of bricks has been dropped on it.

“I don’t know.”

_Cas. Cas. Cas. Cas._

“Can you heal him?”

_Sammy._

“A little, but I’m weak from the -”

He tries to reach towards the voices he hears. Cas is here somehow. He feels like he’s been driving forever without him but he knows that’s not true. It’s only been a few weeks since he lost him, he’s sure of it. There’s a strange absence of the thing that was clutching at his thoughts, he can feel that he’s weak and exhausted but he has a strange clarity that was missing from his perception of the world before he woke up here. Sam and Cas both stop talking and fall into silence as the warmth of healing grace floods his body. He doesn’t know if they know he’s aware they’re there. This still feels real in a way his life didn’t a few minutes ago. The feeling of Cas’s grace is much better than whatever was crawling through him and creeping at the corners of the world and distorting everything earlier. His head hurts, but it feels like a regular, human headache and not the pounding he was feeling earlier. He’s free to think his thoughts and have his memories without the pounding getting worse. Without his brain turning to goop. The healing warmth stops, but some of the pains don’t fade. He feels cold at the sudden absence of Cas’s grace running through his body.

_Cas!_

“Cas?” He manages, his voice rough from lack of use.

He opens his eyes, though they are dim compared to the earlier too-bright feel of everything, the bunker lights still cause the migraine to shoot pains through his head. It takes his eyes a while to adjust too, like he’s been asleep for quite some time. His eyes meet his brother’s first and then further away and looking relieved as hell, Cas. The scent of magic smoke still rings in the air and they’re surrounded by various ingredients. There’s a syringe laying at Sammy’s feet. Some of Rowena’s spell books are piled on the floor next to his bed, one open. _His brother, the wannabe witch._ In a simpler time they hated witches. He thinks now is better though. Sam should stick to the magic stuff if he wants to. 

“It worked!” His brother, the witch in training, is as excited as a 5 year old at Christmas. “We got you back!”

The clock on the wall opposite reads that it’s 5:15, he’s not sure if it’s the AM or PM because he’s been out too long. He stares at the clock face for longer than he probably should, just because he can do so without vomiting. Small victories.

“What… Happened?” He croaks, when was the last time he drank something?

Cas moves without words, filling a glass of water from the sink along the far wall and bringing it over to him. Drinking the glass of water brings some relief.

“Remember when Charlie was yoinked by that djinn?”

He does. It was more than half a decade ago but he remembers. His memory is pretty sharp under normal circumstances. Oh, and when he’s not being drained to death or whatever.

“Another one, huh?”

“Cas managed to kill it before you became a bag of mush, but I didn’t think we were going to get you out of your own head on time. What was that place?”

Oh, like with Charlie, the antidote alone wasn’t enough. Sam had to visit him in his head and saw the messed up hell-heaven the djinn created for him. It was supposed to be heaven but it was so lonely there.

He’s embarrassed to talk about it.

“Did she make you dream about heaven?” Cas asks, softly… almost like he’s talking to a dying man even though they definitely just brought him back from that brink, and then he slams his mouth closed like he didn’t intend to talk at all.

“I - How did you know?”

“I could hear your prayers.”

“It’s how we managed to find the lair.” His brother adds.

_Embarrassing._

“Rebuilding heaven does seem like something Jack would want to do.”

“And you?”

“Well… I’m sure Jack would be happy for me to join him if that’s -”

Something deep and desperate lurches inside Dean’s gut. 

“No!”

_Don’t go._

__

__

Don’t leave me again.

_Please don’t go._

He attempts to get a handle on it. He still has so many questions. The empty took Cas, how is he here now? Has he seen Jack since he disintegrated himself into the fabric of the universe to hang out in dew drops and icicles or whatever? How did he end up in the clutches of a djinn? Where do they go from here? Cas loves him? Cas _loves_ him?

Cas and Sam’s eyes are both on him now.

“I’m mean, sure, maybe… If that’s what you want but don’t go just yet.” Is what he manages to say. He should work on saying what he means before it’s too late. Again.

“Okay, maybe but not just yet.” Cas repeats. His hands are in the pockets of the trench coat and his eyes look at anywhere but Dean when he speaks. He looks small and out of place. Even though he’s neither. And incredibly awkward. Which, fair, but even more so than usual. 

His brother is sitting on the edge of his bed. He looks like he wants the ground to swallow him whole even though he’s sure that Sam would really be wishing that if he knew the half of it.

“So, are you not going to tell me what exactly happened? Jack became the new Chuck and took off and then?” He addresses his brother, trying to kill the weird tension building in the air.

“It grabbed you before we even made it back into the car, just after Jack said goodbye and left, I turned around and you were just… gone.”

“It just sneaked up on me without me even noticing?”

“Well you were pretty out of it, Dean, you had been since…” He trails off, but Dean doesn’t miss his eyes briefly darting over to where Cas is standing stock still, staring at the threads of the comforter. He wishes he would take a seat like Sam, the awkwardness rolling off him is making Dean feel anxious.

“Well, since you met back up with me and Jack.” 

_Since Cas told me he loves me and then promptly died._

His head still hurts, his veins feel like they’re on fire and he still remembers the phantom pain of being impaled through the heart. But he needs this, needs the company of his family members, the fake heaven was so lonely. It felt like a lifetime of being alone.

“But then how did you get back from the empty?” He asks Cas.

“The empty was a mess when I arrived. All the angels, the demons, it turns out that Jack exploding awoke them all. The being was struggling to keep them all under control and then… It took it out on Billie first even though I was the one who summoned it to Earth. Their feud or whatever...” 

He pauses after he starts, and examines his shoes like they’re the most interesting thing in the world. Dean also glances down at the floor, he keeps himself from blurting out that they just need to talk about it already, he notices that the floor is overdue a cleaning and Sam’s made it worse by leaving the remnants of the spell scattered around. The syringe skeeves him out so he looks away. Someone’s going to have to sweep and mop. It’s probably going to be him.

“Well, after it finished with Billie it started on me…”

Torture. Dean realises. Cas isn’t only being shifty because they’re going to have to talk about the major goddamn elephant in the room but because he wants to spare them the details of how bad it was. The being in the empty tortured Cas and now his grace is even weaker than it already was. All because he made a dumb decision to save both of their lives. Well maybe not, after Billie killed them both Cas would have ended up in the empty anyway. And then the torture would have happened anyway. The self-doubt which he had been trying to keep at bay in light of Cas’s words to him starts to creep back in as he realises that his own angry, heat of the moment decision lead to the being hurting Cas. He tries to push it away as he knows that the cycles and cycles are of self blame never get him anywhere. It’s difficult. But they do have the freedom to not worry so much now, to make new and better decisions without causing harm. He’s going to do it anyway because that’s who he is as a person. A small part maybe. Because Cas was also right about who he is as a person. Most of his stupid decisions go back to him caring too much. It’s better than not caring at all. 

“... Well after a while Jack appeared and, well, you know that Jack has god’s power now. The being stopped. And Jack said it could go back to sleep if it wanted, that he would send us all back to sleep but the empty was going to become a place of true rest, as it should have been all along. No more dreams of your worst regrets and sorrows. The empty sleeps and so the angels and demons who are there also sleep.”

He’s listening intently now. Jack said he would put everyone back to sleep but he let Cas go?

“When Jack and I got our chance to talk, he said he was trying to right the universe again after Chuck’s meddling had caused so many wrongs. And then he was going hands-off for good. No more meddling. But I said I needed to think about it so he said if I was still there by the time he’d finished putting everyone back to sleep I’d have to either go with him to help him finish fixing everything or go to sleep. He wouldn’t come back for me if I decided to stay.”

Dean understands why the kid doesn’t want to interfere anymore because being too invested is apparently what got Chuck in so much trouble. But it’s also _Cas_ so he should have brought him back just for that reason alone. Go hands-off after saving Cas, not before. Of course Cas made the deal to save Jack, so given the chance, Jack should have given him a get out of jail free card. Can’t be easy making the right choices when you have the power of God inside you though and Jack is only three years old. And Cas loves Jack and will probably just defend him if Dean brings up all the things that Jack should be doing differently. For example visiting his family every once in a while because Chuck was an evil power hungry douchebag because he was evil and bored and a dick, not because he was too invested or whatever. Jack isn’t Chuck, he’s good, and seeing his family shouldn’t do any harm.

“With Jack distracting the being, I found the door between the empty and Death’s library and managed to sneak away through the chaos. From the library I just had to find the door back here...”

...And he has an excellent sense of direction, Dean recalls him saying. He’s still looking anywhere but at Dean as he speaks. Cas is so good and smart, he’s so glad he came back.

“I didn’t think too much about it until I appeared back here in the bunker. Then I wasn’t sure what to do next…”

He pointedly looks at Dean. Dean needs to get rid of Sam so they can talk because Cas is going to keep acting like he just confessed his love to someone and then was rejected and now he’s super embarrassed to be around them and Dean can’t handle it much longer. Cas deserves to know he’s wanted here, that he’s loved and wanted. Thinking about starting the conversation makes him want to throw up the contents of his empty stomach. But he’s going to man-up and do it if it kills them both to talk about it. Figuratively kills them, no more death-bed confessions.

“I’m glad I came back, because I walked right into Sam who was trying to figure out what had happened to you.”

He’s glad Sam didn’t have to do it alone. If his weird djinn heaven visions meant anything in comparison to their real world selves then he needs to remind his brother the importance of them having friends and connections outside of the two of them. Their lives were small and sad, and Sam’s looked worse after Dean died.

Dean eventually manages to bring up that he hasn’t eaten for days at this point and he could use a burger. All he actually feels inside is nervousness but he can’t have this heart to heart with Cas in front of his brother and he needs some excuse to send him away. Sam, being predictable, tells him that he probably needs something healthier than a burger but he still willingly heads out after hugging him tightly. Dean doesn’t have it in him to complain about the affection. They’ve all been going through a lot. And it sounded like they thought Dean was going to die for real before they managed to bring him to.

“Dean, I’m sorry.” Is what Cas says when they’re finally alone. “It was one or both of us. We didn’t have time to wait her out. I was dying and going to the empty either way. I’d have never -”

“Never what, Cas?”

Cas doesn't answer but he thinks he knows anyway.

“You wouldn’t have said anything unless there was no other choice?” He means to sound annoyed at that, but it comes out soft and sad.

“I - Well - I don’t want to make things here awkward. I don’t know how we can move past this now. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what you expect me to do? I wasn’t exactly expecting to see you again after saying something.”

His gut is screaming at him to fix this. He’s terrified. He just woke up in the infirmary after nearly having his life slowly drained out of him by a monster… He’s exhausted and probably can’t even get up from the bed so it’s hardly the ideal time or place for them to be having this conversation. But when would they ever have the perfect chance? Probably, maybe, now in this new world they will have a more _perfect_ opportunity than this. But Cas didn’t get the perfect opportunity either, he’s admitted that he wouldn’t have said anything at all if the situation hadn’t demanded it, probably would have just lived with the deal hanging over him, believing he would never get to have what could truly make him happy anyway. And Dean, well, if he had ever managed to say anything _(doubtful)_ then the empty would have just shown up unawares and taken Cas away to live an eternity of torture. 

He’s thought about it since Cas was taken, thought about what he would do after bringing him home. He couldn’t get past clinging to him for dear life and begging him not to sacrifice himself again. He thought he’d get Cas back from the empty or die trying and he’d cross that bridge when he came to it. He couldn’t let himself hope he’d get the chance. He hadn’t yet had any time to find a solid way to get to the empty. Now the moment’s here and he just nearly died and he wants to speak but it might just be easier to let Cas go to Jack. Except then they’re both going to be hurting for no reason except him stubbornly refusing to pull his own head out of his ass if he does that.

“Of course you were going to see me again, if I had any say about it. I had a plan, to try and get you back, as soon as we were done with Chuck I was going to start looking, but then I got yoinked and lived some topsy turvy life and I think also dognapped someone's dog and then I died and went to heaven and my life there was also topsy turvy and time passed weird and gave me a headache.”

Cas smiles and looks him in the eye for a second when he hears that Dean had a plan to bring him home… Then he goes right back to staring at the unswept floor.

“What was -”

He cuts him off, it’s his turn to talk.

“Eye contact won’t kill you, you know.”

“It might, if I don’t like what I see when you look back at me.”

“ _Cas._ ” It’s a little desperate. He doesn’t care.

“What was your plan?” He asks, looking him directly in the eyes.

 _This is worse actually._ He thinks when his heart almost bursts out of his chest and he loses his train of thought. He maintains eye contact though. He missed Cas so much. He wants to reach out and touch him. 

“Remember how Jack mentioned the mandragora, Dad supposedly extincted them but how was he absolutely certain? He had his journal and the car and sometimes the library. I thought maybe there were some in hiding somewhere. I didn’t say it was a good plan but it was a start, you know?”

He reaches for the painkillers from his bedside table. Cas reaches to pass the to him and then moves to fetch him another glass of water to take the pills with.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t heal you more than this, I did the best I could for now.”

The conversation is clinical on Cas’s end. He’s still being awkward around him. Dean thought they were getting somewhere.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I should be able to heal you more fully within the week if you don’t recover on your own. I should probably go and rest now, we both need to rest and Sam will be back with your food soon.”

Cas hands him the glass of water and turns like he’s going to leave him alone. Being alone sounds like the worst thing in the world right now. Or the second worst thing. Cas leaving again is the worst.

“I - no!” He stops him from leaving by taking his hand. Cas looks at their joined hands, taken aback. Dean can read the miniscule speck of hope written on his face even if others wouldn’t be able to.

“Cas, we’re not done here. I wasn’t finished. You got to say your piece but I keep being stopped from saying mine. First in Purgatory.” Cas tilts his head at that. Dean knows it’s true, although he’s not sure what else he had even planned to say after the apology, it didn’t feel like enough and he’d wanted to say more and he probably would have blurted it out then and there, in the one place where his emotions felt pure and dragged to the surface. Cas takes a seat on the edge of the bed, and Dean breathes a little easier at the indication that he’s going to stay put and listen.

“And then after you told me you love me and sacrificed yourself like that. Please don’t do that again by the way, I don’t think I can take it anymore. Then when I believed the djinn dream was my real life it was like I couldn’t speak your name at all… But my unconscious still kept bringing you up over and over again and then the djinn forced me to push it down all over again, and also in the fake heaven I was trying to reach out to you so hard despite losing my ability to even think and yet I couldn’t see you at all. I couldn’t say a damn thing. So I get to say it now. _I love you,_ ” it falls out like it’s the easiest thing in the world to say probably because it’s been true for a long time and his heart has just been waiting for his brain to turn the page and catch up. Like he hasn’t been filled with anxiety and terror over it. His heart beats loudly in his chest, reminding him that the anxiety and terror are still there, they’re just being drowned out by relief and love. “I’m in love with you, you dumbass. I must have been for… for a long time.”

Cas is smiling, he looks happy and it’s such a rare sight Dean wants to savour it forever. His eyes are filled with unshed tears. There’s a palpable raw emotion running between them. Dean needs to do something.

“Are you going to cry on the regular now?” He asks, trying to let lighten the mood. He kneels up on the bed so that he can reach forward and wipe away Cas’s tears. “You should probably let me know if that’s something -”

_Something my boyfriend is going to be doing a lot._

__

__

_Boyfriend._

He’s not quite ready to ask if that’s what they’re going to be to each other yet. Instead he takes Cas’s face and wipes his eyes and distracts himself. He kisses him before he can think and worry much too about the semantics of it all. It’s gentle and quick but Cas chases it so he leans back in. He still feels like himself, just himself kissing Cas who he might have to actually start calling his _boyfriend_ soon. It feels like less of a big deal than he thought it was ten minutes ago. It feels easy and free and like it’s exactly what he wants and needs. 

They kiss for a while, but he does eventually have to stop to breathe and collect his bearings. He’s still weak from being drained by the djinn. He can feel the tiredness setting into his bones and Cas was right when he told him that he needs to relax, eat and sleep it off. Besides, he hears the heavy bunker doors being dragged open, a sign that Sam has returned with their food. His stomach growls with hunger. He sways a little from the exhaustion and Cas coaxes him to lean back against the pillows on the bed instead of trying to kneel unaided for much longer. He can’t yet hear Sam’s footsteps approaching but he knows it won’t be long before he’s bursting into the room.

He wants to keep going, he wants to tell Cas that he’s known for a long time, that his biggest doubts were Cas’s feelings and sometimes when he thought that Cas felt it too that something else would happen to make him doubt it. He wants to confide in Cas his worries about people knowing that he’s not straight, that he might freak out on him at some point about their friends knowing that much about him. That his dad would have killed him for this but he doesn’t think he cares anymore. Not with all those years between his dad’s influence on his life and the hunting world he was raised to be part of compared to that very same world now. Now is better. The hunting world of today has a space for hunters like Charlie and Stevie, Claire and Kaia, retired hunters like Jesse and Cesear who got to leave it all behind for a chance at happiness, witches like Max Banes and Rowena, and even himself and Cas. It’s also hard to give a damn what his long gone father and the hunters of their past days would think when Cas is sitting there on the edge of the bed like the cat that got the cream and looking dorky and...

And _adorable._

He does have one more thing he needs to get out now though.

“Can you promise me something?”

“What?”

“You can’t make any more deals like that. I can’t lose you like that again. Chuck is gone. We’ve both told each other how we feel, man, you just can’t.”

“I’m sorry about the deal, Dean. It was for Jack. I couldn’t let him die. And the being was only upset with him because he saved me so it was only fair that it would take me and not him.”

Dean hates the logic of the entire thing.

“I get it Cas. The things we do for family and all that. But next time, please can you just promise me that I won’t lose you like that _again_?”

“Okay, I promise.”

“Good.”

“And you’re going to stay right? You’re not just going to up and disappear to heaven one day?”

“I’ll stay as long as you’ll have me. And if I do have to go they won’t be able to keep me away from you for very long, I’ll come back as soon as I can.”

“Good.”

And then he says it again, because it feels right to.

“I love you.” 

Cas laughs at him.

“I love you too.” It’s so gentle and he’s looking at him in that soft way he sometimes does. The soft way he sometimes looks at him because he _loves_ him. It makes him feel giddy to think about.

Cas starts to shuffle further down the bed to put some distance between them as Sam’s footsteps begin to approach. He tries to let go of Dean’s hand. (Dean must have grabbed it at some point. Good, he wants to hold Cas’s hand always). Dean squeezes his hand firmer, as firmly as he can manage anyway. He catches his eye in a challenge. Cas is trying to give him an out, to not have to talk about this yet. _It’s only Sam, what’s he going to do about it?_ Cas squeezes his hand back and holds on. 

Sam doesn’t even comment on their closeness. On the fact they’re holding hands right under his nose. Dean is both thankful and annoyed that he’s going to have to be the one to bring it up because the one time he wants his brother to force something out of him he’s decided to remain tight lipped. His brother helps himself to his greasy food, Cas has to help Dean with his burger which would be more embarrassing if he weren’t so happy. Sam forces him to eat a stupid side salad and take an iron supplement because of all the blood the djinn made him lose. He’s too tired to protest. Mrs. Butters did tell him he should eat more vegetables at his age.

  


⍣ ❦ ⍣ ❦ ⍣ ❦ ⍣ ❦ ⍣ ❦ ⍣

  


It’s a few days later, Sam has been busy making plans with Eileen and acting like he’s not avoiding him and Cas. It’s not like they’ve been doing anything except watching movies or Netflix shows together. They’ve even been reigning in the PDA when Sam is in the room, and yet Sam seems like he’s barely been around. Dean wants them all to take a vacation together, maybe convince Jack to join them to make Cas even more happy, but Sam wants to go and spend some time with Eileen first. He’s going to take off as soon as she gives the word that she’s done helping her friend on a hunt.

He finds Sam in the kitchen, it’s 6am and Dean’s usually asleep at that time, and especially since the djinn he’s needed all the rest he can get. Since having the bunker to call home, he gets a lot more sleep in general than he did all those years ago when they lived in motels and their car, it’s probably good for his health or something. He’s a night-owl anyway, not an early riser like Sam. Sam’s clearly already been out on a morning run as he’s still dressed in his work-out gear and he has his nose buried in his phone, as per usual these days, while he waits for the coffee to be done.

“Morning.” He says. “Is Eileen doing good?”

“She’s fine.” He doesn’t even look up.

“Have you asked her if she’s on board for the trip?”

“Not yet.”

“What happened to the dog?” He’s just doing his best not to talk about it now. But he came here to talk about it while Cas busied himself doing some research on Dean’s old laptop. He’d woke up to the empty bed feeling cold, and found Cas sitting at his desk. He knew Sam would be awake so he left his _almost-boyfriend_ to it and came to find him.

“What?”

“The dog that we found after Cas was - The dog that Chuck snapped out of existence.”

“Oh, he went home with his owner when Jack brought everyone back.”

He has to say it soon because he’s sick of his brother both avoiding them like he’s about to walk in on them having sex and acting like there’s nothing going on between the two of them at the same time. (They’ve not even gone that far yet). He knows he’s set the precedent of not wanting to talk about his feelings but the time he needs to be coaxed to say anything his brother decides to stick his nose out and pretend he doesn’t see it. Unless he’s just so caught up in Eileen he actually hasn’t noticed. Either way, it’s beyond time to talk.

“So we should talk about Cas, right?”

“Uh, what about him? Is he still here? Did you get into another fight?”

He finds it really hard to believe that anyone is that oblivious.

“No, we didn’t get in a fight. Actually the... opposite… of a fight?”

 _What does that even mean? Good start._ He thinks.

“That’s good then. What’s going -”

It’s painful for him to do this. He fights down the nervous ache forcing its way through his body and takes a deep breath.

“CasandIaredating.”

He doesn’t elaborate. If Sam wants to know he can ask and stop forcing him to be the conversation starter. His heart is beating out of his chest. He wants to go back to his bubble with Cas, where this whole thing is surprisingly easy to do, and calm down. 

“Can you repeat that?”

“Nope, nah, you heard.”

Sam goes easy on him. 

“Well, it’s about time.” Is all he says.

“You’re an asshole. This was hard for me to say and all you have to say is ‘it’s about time’?”

“I’m happy for you both? Now it makes sense why you’ve been so caught up in each other and practically clinging to each other all over the bunker and making me feel like a third wheel. Because I kind of unknowingly was, right?”

“Wait you didn’t know at all? And you don’t care and expected this to happen eventually?”

“Dean. Have you seen yourself when you lose him? When you get him back? We _all_ expected this to happen eventually.”

“Who is ‘we all’?” If he’s a little defensive it’s because he’s been talking about emotions and his _feelings_ way longer than he anticipated or wanted and he’s been expecting to have to keep telling every one of their friends and have to subject himself to the mortifying ordeal of people knowing things about him and visibly see their reactions and then Sam tells him that everyone just expected that he and Cas would get together? It’s a weird kind of relief that everything will be okay when everyone finds out, and a pent up worry that he now has nowhere to place.

“Well, um, me and Eileen, Jack and then uh, Jody and Claire… Donna too...”

He’s about to reel off an entire list. Dean has to cut in.

“Donna’s never even _met_ Cas.”

“Yeah, but she’s hung out with you, and she hangs out with Jody and the girls… And everyone talks.”

“About me? About my -”

 _About my sexuality?_ Is what he wants to say. But his brother seems eager to placate him before he has to force the words out.

“Dean it’s not like that, I promise. They’re all just curious about Cas that’s all. About what you two have. I mean had, before you were even, you know, together.”

“Okay, okay. So, you’re not going to tell them right? You’re going to wait until I’m ready so that I can talk to them about it… I mean I’m not sure about… About what to even say and I’m not ready for the questions and I don’t think I’m ready to tell them yet. I mean I guess you can tell Eileen but… I don’t think I can handle it if she has questions and -”

Panic mode is in full swing again, but he’s going to be okay.

“Okay, okay, your business is your business, calm down. For what it’s worth I’m happy for you both and proud of you. ” 

His brother hugs him. Existing in this new post-Chuck world full of chick-flick moments and having to talk to people about his business is exhausting and exhilarating and stressful in a way his life 15 years ago never was but he can get through it and then he has a lifetime of memories to make with Cas. He’s pretty sure being a different person than he was 15, 14, 12 years ago and the hunting community being full of his friends and found family, softer hearted hunters who care for one another, is a very good thing actually.

“Bitch.”

“Jerk.”

He starts breakfast for himself. His brother goes back to his coffee and Eileen. Cas joins them at the breakfast table soon enough, even though he doesn’t eat, he does drink his black coffee though. It’s easy and normal in a way their lives never are. Maybe this is going to be their new Chuckless reality, but after years of waiting for the other shoe to drop and never getting a break he still has to push down the feeling that something else is coming, he’s probably going to be waiting for that feeling to subside for a long time. But Cas’s warmth pressed up next to him and the hand gently resting against his thigh helps a lot. He places a hand on top of Cas’s and squeezes it reassuringly. Sam doesn’t bring it up that Dean and Cas are _dating/almost-dating/boyfriends/almost-boyfriends_ again but he does mention missing Jack. They all miss Jack though. Dean doesn't care if he's supposed to be in the water of the coffee they're drinking and the furniture and whatever else, that's kind of weird actually and the kid should be here.

Then, apropos of nothing, Sam jerks them out of their melancholy over Jack by saying “Oh, god. I’m going to have to see you guys being so gross to each other all over the bunker now.” Almost everything is right with the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry that writing this fix-it took me so long! I am not a fast writer anymore.
> 
> Look, if the show can claim that he gets taken out by being impaled while hunting vampires wearing rubber masks not long after they beat God himself, then I can claim that a random djinn was able to grab him off the street after being snapped back into existence right after they beat God himself. It barely has to make sense to be better than what the show gave us. I based this on that one djinn in 8x20 who feeds off of fear instead of happiness. I know it doesn’t fully make sense but it was kind of a means to an end because the actual finale sucked and I wanted to “it was all a dream” it away. 
> 
> The mandragora that Dean mentioned as a possible way he was going to bring Cas back are the monsters Jack mentions in 15x12 whose liver can be used for a spell but who the boys say their father made extinct. The World Bender spell doesn’t sound like it would do anything good actually but we’ll never know.


End file.
